I love you. These three words, no matter how many men I'd been with, were scarecely uttered to me. People generally liked parts of me; they liked me in the bedroom, but they didn't want to look me in the eye after. They liked my steady hands, the nimble way I poured drinks and ran my fingers down their backs. They liked my laugh but not my face, my work ethic but not my crudeness, the way I handled myself but not the harder, more tragic parts of me. At my best, I was light and goofy and eager to please, and at my worse, I would be gone for days or collapsed in the bed sheets, sobbing my throat raw until I couldn't make a sound. I would sink into depressions so dark that my partners, one by one, had to leave. This was not the Dimitri they had met. This was not the Dimitri they wanted.
But
